


No Man's Hero

by Souja



Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: AU-???, Character-centric, Gen, It...is a thing, and messy? idk, shows up ten years late with starbucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 02:18:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souja/pseuds/Souja
Summary: Eishi's mind races while he's searching for his friends. He may not be a hero, but he cares for them immensely.Merry Christmas!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnimusStuff (DarthAnimus)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthAnimus/gifts).



> For the tumblr Birdmen Secret Santa! AU shenanigans in full force!

**.No Man’s Hero.**

_\--_

_He wasn’t a hero, they were. But for their sake he could pretend._

_\--_

Sagisawa shrieked when Irene stuck frigid fingers on the blades of his shoulders. Kamoda cackled at the noise, toppling backwards over a Tsubame that hid her laugh behind a mass’d arm. Silent, with eyebrows relaxed, Takayama watched.

There was a pull towards the languid familiarity they played with while Eishi ran over schematics for the upcoming rescue. One he yearned to fold into, to partake of, despite knowing there was much to be done. Demands of the Company seemed intent on putting him further away. While his family answered higher callings, his days were furiously orchestrating upwards of four, five teams at a time. It’d been that way since the initial training. He was a Bellwether, after all. Agent Black from  _the_ team Tokyo. In the eyes of the company, in the eyes of most, he served better with his talent spread out.

What he _wanted_ was to remove the awful earpiece that connected him to the network of supervisors. To stretch his coiled wings and take flight, as they had done not long ago. Base Camelot was built into a mountain while Gilgamesh was a state over. Both were tucked out of sight, purposefully obscured and hard to reach. Far from any known Eden branches.

Despite that, Eishi hadn’t been on the field in ages.

The Camelot base had birds that needed guidance, situations that needed controlling. And though he voiced his rolling disapproval, he had a knack for it. _Like clockwork_ , the silver-tongued founder had said of him. With him they moved like synchronised gears. It was a universally unsaid fact that to keep him in a little team of six would be downright wasteful, a kind of mute shackle that stayed his movements through even the toughest of days.

Till now. 

Now he flew as fast as he could over fields and marshes and dying trees. Through gullies and bugs and _away,_ with a passion that seemed intent on swallowing him whole. Because Gilgamesh had fallen, and there was the slightest possibility said family was in danger. Faster, faster, tearing through clouds and cold and searing lungs.

Crackles distorted the founders voice as he continued rattling half-information. _\---burning. --attack? ---survivors_ . Things Eishi did not want to hear, things that made him curse the physical limitations of his body stopping him from being there _right now_.

And that was the point when he ripped off the headset, dispensing it in a wingmass pocket. Frustration bubbled black in his stomach. To wait a whole extra hour to let _a different team_ come in would be torture, regardless of how _suited_ they were to the task. He couldn't stand it. Not when he was already so close, so able.

If something happened to them, it would crush him.

\--

As a group they’d met a lifetime ago when being a seraph was a rarity. Back before marketing tried to push the absolutely corny (unduly regal) ‘Guardian Angel’ schtick. A _something_ had formed--something deeper than just the connection the wings made. Sticky camaraderie that beat softly in their absence, even more in their presence. And, well, the beating grew deeper every day.

They were the missing puzzle pieces to his existence. Immovable, irreplaceable parts that constituted his very being. Habits, really, that guided his day-to-day actions.

No formal decisions were made about this--this _hero_ business. Just moonlit discussions while playing tag in the skies. They were kids, after all, flung from the obtusely mundane to the hysterically supernatural in a bid to save their lives. Days of play drew them close, bonds knit from wingmass threads and forged through fires of shared experiences.

Then, the Call.

The founder promised friendship and freedom in a place far, far away. He promised they'd be loved--they'd be heroes. 

Eishi’d sneered at the thought. Did he really even _look_ like a hero? He was short, ornery, with a habitual squint that highlighted the perpetual chip on his shoulder.

But the rest? The rest were handpicked for futures they would carve out themselves. And they chose, for some reason, to be swooned by the sun. What else was he supposed to do but go along? Their lives had been connected the moment they’d died.

The answer now, was the same as then.

“Do you want to live or die?”

 _He’d thought to how unfair it was, how awful that he’d die so young. He’d been selfish, selfish, selfish, and the answer while his vision faded was_ **_yes, I want to live._**

“Do you want to live or die?”

 _He thought to the people he surrounded himself with, their spread grins and addictive company. Of bald heads and cats and flying, careless memories that kept him through the day in field he was not suited for, but stayed in because he was selfish, selfish, selfish. The answer was,_ **_yes, yes, I want to live_** _, with the added caveat of,_ **_I want to live with them._ **

A “Kingdom of heroes!” seemed too good to be true. But here they were months later, contracted out to do aide work in places where human workers could not reach. He was careful, peeling over each contract they were given, dismembering and aligning them, searching for hidden traps.

While they were off being amazing he did his part by listening, taking their suggestions and breathing them to life. And when they established Camelot HQ--a renaissance against two existing, and exceedingly corrupt organizations--he did it again with cautious glances and an open ear. How many night shifts did he take? How many theatrical monologues about _helping people_ and _care for the world_ did he sit through?

“You're still at it!” the founder said often, a halo of sunshine on his head. It was eclipsed by the dark patch of wingmass over one of his eyes, "Do you just really like working?" 

Eishi’s gaze always landed on his friends as they danced and mingled with others in a catastrophe of limbs. He hummed against the urge to join.

\--

The beats of their wings were embedded in his psyche.

But the wind--the _wind!_ \-- made it impossible to see. Buffalo gails and awful rain that whipped at his legs and pulled at his wings, tossing him this way and that. The threads of signals from their wings wavered at the assault that whispered, _you’re too late._

He breathed, deep, asking them to coil around him and cease the splintering. He breathed again, ignoring the debris and the wind and the thrumming of his heart.

The winds would not stop him.

Not the ones that singed at his eyes, that pricked his throat when base Gilgamesh’s town was in view. He gasped at the destruction, at the razed buildings and the distant, mournful hum of the hurricane announcement system. It echoed as he landed, taking in the expanse of faded rock. Some... _thing_ had warped the sign leading through the towns only main road. A bastardised version of the cheery face said _Welcome to --_ but the metal distorted at the end.

A similar something twisted in him, dark and angry and _hot_ when he remembered phantoms of days past--the square where they helped and danced and laughed. He ignored memories of the work they’d put in, the stares they’d endured, how _hard_ it’d been to establish trust with the rural town and how _angry_ he was.

He rushed past them, a man on a mission.

 _Where the_ **_hell_ ** _are you?_ He screamed in unfettered seraph noise, barreling through ash and rubble to the tiny farm outside the town, _What do you think you’re getting at?_

Many of the trees were still intact. He almost let himself believe they were okay--that whatever happened had passed right over them and gone on through.

 _And staying back?_ He challenged. Ruins curtained around the threshold like a veil. The front gardens--the ones that the younger seraphs and older meta’s with more lasting syndromes tended to--had been destroyed. Breathing stung. How dare they. _How dare they._

Rocks and rubble assaulted his eyes, and for a moment there was nothing but the wind and the sand and the  _pain_ in his chest. But he was a persistent sort.

 _Do you seriously think I’d just_ **_leave_ ** _you here? Get over yourselves!_ was what he bellowed instead, fixating on loose threads of where-they’d-been. Pushed aside were considerations of why they weren’t answering, of what wrong they’d done to warrant the destruction of such a little home. There was a hatch, near the back. A big metal sort built for end-of-the-world shenanigans. He went there.

Wingmass bulldozers pushed rubble aside in awful, sweeping, scoops. Relief mixed with fear in an agonizing sort of rocket-fuel. Hopeful maybe-they-were-safe’s dancing with the possibility that every dark crevice could be a hand, a leg, a body. _Didn’t I say no dumbass sacrifices? Didn’t I? Or weren’t you listening?!_

_You said you wanted to live, damn it!_

His emotioned state made him clumsy, desperate. It took too long to clear a path. Metal shrieked at the pull of his claws, leaving indents where it came apart.

Gilgamesh had fallen. Gilgamesh had fallen.

 _I’m coming_ , he promised, hoping they could hear him.

\--

Time dispersed his friends among the others--the strays--that they gathered. Yeah, gathered. It was a better word than _abandoned_ and did not carry the same uncomfortable weight as _collected_. And he, for himself, tended to stick to the outskirts. Some days a sickly, human, fear said _they don’t need you_.

Team Tokyo always seemed to appear on those days.

Umino liked to bubble by with tales of new friends she’d met-- did he know she was learning another language? Yeah, because sometimes people didn’t react well to the whole thought-speaking thing. It freaked them out. It was really hard, though, could he spare a few minutes to listen?

Sagisawa had tried for tact the first few times, now flounced his way into whatever room he was occupying and claimed the hour for himself. He’d complain about some job he’d taken, punctuating his sentences with overly excited gestures while the time ticked away. “So even _you_ can be selfish,” Eishi’d note, whatever project he’d buried himself in still unfinished. Sagisawa would laugh.

Like the spectre he was, Takayama tended to appear at his windows and abduct him. Or he’d sit in a corner and say nothing until Eishi exploded in a flurry of tired rants. When he was tuckered, his piece said, Takayama would smile and take his leave.

Kamoda made a habit of coming, his presence almost constant when they weren’t miles apart. He came with no intention of changing his mood. No distractions or issues facetious. His presence awoke middleschool ghosts. He’d be at the door a minute before Eishi paused and said, “Hey, wanna go somewhere?”

More often than not, there was no set plan. Just a minute away from...this. Sometimes they talked, catching up or wasting the already truant time. Sometimes they didn’t, in their own bubbles of activity under the same shared sky.

One day in particular, just before they’d settled on roles and such, he bragged excitedly about a meta girl he’d met. She’d scratched his arm so badly it’d needed to be cleaned and sutured, just in case. He said he was in love.

That part of him was envious, Eishi supposed. Something he was incapable of, that Kamoda gave away in bounds. He watched his partially-formed talons and mused that he’d have hit her back, if he was there. But Kamoda beamed, his chatter warm and grounding. Eishi put his talons away.

The days he liked best were the ones when they all absconded together and the usually too-small room filled with mass and bodies in a scene that only happened in fragments now. Ten minutes before a briefing, five between meetings. Most of his time was spent with the founder, the fair, flightless fellow that had called them to the place.

Waking hours were spent with the not-buffoon leader. Gilgamesh faced a small town were relations were...tense. Getting better, that much was true, but tense nonetheless. Leader was free with his words, spoke widely and openly about nothing and everything. His most favourite topic was the friends he'd lost. Though he didn't talk about the incident, they somehow worked their way into every conversation. Living ghosts, they were. 

“Why didn't you split up?” Eishi asked once while they tended to a small calamity of civilians. (That _he_ of all people would be on public relations was laughable! But here he was, surprising himself everytime he didn’t roll his eyes or click in disgust. They liked to give him crowns of flowers that fit awkwardly on his head.)  

The golden boys wings seeped into his as a woven basket to hold gifts of gratitude. They intruded on the fragile line of split consciousness between them. He said nothing. 

Eishi had frowned, shielding his eyes with his free hand. Then he continued, “It was stupid of you. They didn’t need to die.”

It was crass because some _had_ died. He was no stranger to the grief the founder carried. Following his New York debut, he'd aged a millennia. It struck him as odd that there was anything other than cold fury behind hazel eyes, but he insisted they interact with human beings. 

 _Don't hate them,_ he plead, his smile miserable. He was a conundrum. 

Though he could not fly, he lead a troupe of flying children. He moved at all times, but required breaks often. Even what they were doing--carrying old toys and fruits and cans upon cans of goods--required careful rerouting of life-sustaining wingmass. He had to choose--did he want an arm, today? Or did he need a leg. He couldn’t have both without drawing it away from vitals. Commendable. Confusing. Irritating. 

The hero-king continued to smile, a perpetual thing that wrenched his stomach. Eishi knew in his heart of hearts that he couldn’t be that kind. His family though? They already were.

If he awoke to a world with that sort of ending, it would crush him. Drive him  _mad._

So he looked for outs; for not-givings-up and flags to avoid tripping. Things that would keep them safe when an inevitable dark side of this hero business reared its head. It was awful, he was awful, but when hadn’t he been?

He wasn’t a hero, after all. He was more or less a shadow.  

Golden boy gave him a sad, puckered smile, customarily averting his gaze.  

Eishi frowned at the lack of answer, newly bitter, and _pressed_ , “You could have gone alone. They’d have been _safe_.”

He judged him harshly from the standpoint of his own predicament--his family with their determined faces saying _We’ll come with you_ , as if there was no other option when there were so many-- he wasn’t worth... _they were so much better than…_

Would _he_ have been okay? Would he have lasted a  _minute?_   The whole was only the sum of its parts and without them he was an unfinished jigsaw. He and the founder--they had the same ability, more or less, same future-shaping capabilities. Would he have barked at them, _stay back!_ If the thing they said was, _let me in?_

A gentle thrum skirted on the edges of their joined mass and the founder turned to face him. The absence of smiles on the pale face sent chills down Eishi’s spine. But his eyes were clear and focused. He nodded, once, as they reached the threshold and the door was pried open.

Eishi hated the way he understood.

\--

The bunker was empty, walls had been stripped of the granola and canned provisions they stocked it with. The walls were cracked and crumbling, ash layering thick on all surfaces. The hatch that lead out of it, usually hidden beneath a slab of concrete and wood, had been opened.

There’d be relief in his anger, later, but for now his throat had swelled shut with worry. Every resource that wasn’t tearing through earth and rubble was diligently sharpening his senses. He broadcasted messages as frequently as he could, till he even he wasn’t sure what was being said.

He was following a thread trail that grew stronger and more concrete as he drew closer. His own booming footsteps grated on his ears, and the whimpering foundation crumbling beneath his claws felt like a thousand tiny needles on his skin.

_Karasuma._

The chugging train of worry-worry-worry stopped. Dust settled on balled fists. _Takayama?_

_You’re so loud._

He sounded tired, so tired, with just a hint of amusement to his tone. _Answer then!_ Eishi snapped. _Where is everyone?_

 _In the tunnels_.

A beat. He pressed his head against the curved walls and inhaled, deep. _What happened? Why won’t they answer?_

 _Eden,_ Takayama supplied. The damage done by unliberated agents. It explained the lack of response--doing so would let the enemy know exactly where they were. Eishi swore. That explained the silentwing as opposed to the regular tweet channel.

_You’re…?_

_Safe,_ his friend supplied, and this time there was a definite hum of a laugh, _We’re safe, Karasuma._

It was as if a floodgate had opened, and out came streams of bravado and anxiety that had kept him going. Eishi deflated, dropping to his knees, his hands finding his face. “Thank _god,”_ he said, somewhere between a laugh and a cry, “Thank. God.”

 

.


	2. Aftermath

_\--_

_One, two, three_

_One, two._

_\--_

It took forever smuggling them back to Camelot. Forever and a small flood of black-cloaked bodies that thanked him profusely as they were lead away and didn't listen until he commanded them, **_Hush_**. 

The back-up team arrived a little over an hour after him, comprised of a Messenger charged with three Storks, and a Booster for any cherubs who needed an extra hand. And he couldn't help the burn of embarrassment on his cheeks, having not thought of the  _others_. His family was strong, see, comprised of powerhouses and trained by experience and...and... he should have known they were alright, but he'd been _worried,_ dammit!  

So he was calm as he lead them up the mountain, as he counted heads and feet and checked for injuries that required more attention than what the wingmass healing would provide. His autopilot whirred in absence of conscious thought, and if he strained, Eishi swore he could almost hear the founder repeating,  _"Like oiled gears."_ , though the Golden Boy was nowhere present on the long flight home. Smaller birdmen interspersed with the older ones, and despite the scare Camelot was a ruckus of noise and activity when they returned.

The original mission--a liberation of a practically-defunct Eden farm with few outputs--had succeeded. Two meta’s, one a squirrel and the other unfortunate, joined their ranks along with a small crop of unawakened cherubs from said farm. Golden Boy took over, ushering them to rooms while adding strain to their dwindling list of resources. There'd be a  _meeting_ for that, later. A discussion that he truly didn't give a flying crap about but would sit through and take notes on. 

It struck him heavily, the knowledge that he did not care for the other ones. Of course he did, in the same way he'd felt  _sympathy_ as a human. That innate care, the knee-jerk response to another creature in pain, more heavily engrained now that they were connected by wings and skies. But did he  _care?_ The same way that staunched Sagisawa's lies, or Kamoda's healing? That had Umino learning languages, Takayama's-- _Takayama?_

He felt his heart drum in his chest --one, two, three. one, two-- with the shivered realisation that he probably didn't. 

Eishi's world felt suspiciously like fire, his skin and wings buzzing with adrenaline that refused to stop pumping. His mind retched against calm, darting this way and that and reminding him of an ever unnamed  _something else_ that needed be done. But the teams had their tasks, the supervisors their duties, and he a small infinity of time to kill, but no one to kill it with.

Well, not truly. 

The unnamed feeling was one he was used to, one he knew intimately. But. But. This time there'd be no drop-in visits to take the edge away, and something burning in his stomach shamed him for even considering it, knowing what he'd done.  

So instead of folding into the chaos, of taking his mantle as Bird Black  _(from The team Tokyo_ ) like the farce of a hero he was, he watched.

A probing squad was formed. The seeker --Fiona, was it? He never really talked to her-- lead the thing, her prompts much softer than those of Takayama and less likely to alert any lingering nasties to their presence. Umino would join later, setting out a lower frequency to pick up on humans that they may not have noticed. At present she hovered outside the room, her fingers clutched around the little black book he'd become very familiar with it.  

When she saw him, she shared the softest of smiles. Scar tissue on her chin said hello as well, taking its time healing. "Karasuma!" she said, grinning, "You did good out there." 

Eishi forced his lips upwards and muttered, "Thanks." 

And then

there was

an 

entire 

minute

of

quiet. 

Where he had a billion things to say, but no voice to say it with. And it was only a minute but it was  _sixty entire seconds_ , and for some reason it felt unbelievable that his words would be tied, when there was much he wanted to say.  

As if sensing this, Umino looked up at him. Really _looked_ , like he was the single person in the entire building.  _That scar_ glared back, and Eishi felt himself gulp as her eyebrows contorted to a worried line. "Hey, you alright?" she started to say, and the book was abandoned to a pocket of wingmass. 

Eishi realised, to some degree, that he was probably not very high on the Alright scale (if he was honest, he likely wasn't on it at all). But he also realised that he hadn't put a name to the issue, and what could he say --  _"Sorry I came to save you"?_  That would be a bigger lie than, _"I'm alright."_

"Tired," he said instead in that purposefully muffled way that deflected questions. And then he furrowed his eyes back at her, clicking his tongue. "That's an awful-looking scar," he said, hoping she would take the bait and pretend she hadn't spent much of her childhood with parents and adults who used redirection to avoid important conversations. "Has someone looked at it?"

She frowned, but rubbed the obviously-stitched area. And then her eyes lit up as she grinned. "I got beaned by a telephone pole," she informed him. Her front tooth was completely missing. "I can finally  _whistle_ and it's the  _coolest_   _thing_. Irene's teaching me songs she learned from _Eden_ and there's this one about a pirate and--."

\--And at that moment the door peeled open. He was met by sunspun blonde hair, amethyst eyes and a terribly bored slate. Behind her, Takayama's lips quirked in the slightest of smiles. 

"Oh. It's time already?" Umino spun back to him, smiling sheepishly, "maybe next time, Karasuma." 

(And she knew exactly what he was doing, had spent  _fourteen years_ perfecting the art of being cutely distracting. But if Karasuma needed a minute, if Karasuma needed an hour, then she'd allow him that much.)  

Karasuma wandered the halls a little slower after that, arrested by his thoughts and propelled by tired feet. Eventually he made it to the main floor kitchen.

Kamoda greeted him brightly while his hands busied with finger-foods. A plate materialised before him, garnished by an overly stuffed sandwich with two olives for eyes. Kamoda shrugged--they were all out of rice.

Responses came slow for Eishi, so instead he let Kamoda fill the air. He spoke about his day, the way he was _so close_ to finally winning against Umino--if he could just learn to overcome her terrible pokerface. The mission went well--had he met Arden yet? Arden loved basketball. They were gonna play once he gained a little confidence in his wings.

“--And I realised--,” Kamoda was saying, making diagonal cuts across soft white bread. Right. The townsfolk. They’d gotten away, right? He was sure they’d evacuated, but couldn’t place destinations to faces. 

Suddenly there were dark eyes before his. A fixed glare that caused him to gasp. “ **So stay alive, Eichan.** ”

He jumped clearing the wooden stool he was sitting on. It clattered beneath him, his eyes wide and alert. “What was _that?_ ” he demanded, a whisper over the roar of his heart.

A sheepish grin from his oldest friend as he rounded the corner, “You’re always telling us to be careful, right? So, uhm, return favour.” From the floor he towered over him in a way that hadn’t been apparent since his middle school growth spurt. “What’s wrong?” he asked, as though he hadn’t just given him a heart attack. His gaze was concerned, careful and unpatronizing. But there was a hardness to his jaw, a slight sag to his shoulders--this had been a long time coming, hadn’t it?

A shrug under yellow kitchen lights, and Eishi found himself asking the same thing. It felt altogether claustrophobic, the sensation in his chest. He rose, sharply, startling the closed bread out of Kamoda’s hands.

“Hey,” he said, breathing heavy, “wanna go somewhere?”

\--

“So, you got them?” The founder said, his grin wide and messy across his face. Per usual his wingmass had been affixed over part of his face. The rest--much less than most, aside from the newly transformed cherubs-- draped over his shoulders in a makeshift parka.

Eishi nodded, bracing for some sort of reproach. The guy was a buffoon but--he did his job. And he’d defaulted (he’d do it again, in a heartbeat, but that made it no better).

But none came and instead the other man hummed. “Good job,” Arthur said, paying no heed to the way Eishi’s eyes widened and his spine stiffened.

He assessed him through calculating eyes, taking the open seat next to him.

As the fire murmured goodnight, he swore he heard him say, “I’d do the same thing.”

.

 


End file.
